Data pulled from a recent Freedom of Information Act request reveals that an overwhelming majority of 911 wireless calls made over a six-month period last year in Washington, DC were delivered “without accurate location information to find callers who are lost, confused, unconscious or otherwise unable to share their location.” Only ten percent of calls from the first half of 2013 within the city included detailed location data. At the moment, FCC regulations demand higher location accuracy only on outdoor calls, making built-up areas like DC harder to hone in on. Public safety officials told the Washington Post that these location issues are widespread. According to Find Me 911 , carriers typically able to offer “Phase I’ data, which covers a phone number and the location of the base station transmitting the call. ‘Phase I’I data, meanwhile, includes latitude and longitude coordinates, accurate to between 50 and 300 meters. According to the data, Verizon and Sprint offered this detailed information on 24.6 percent and 23.3 percent of emergency calls. However, T-Mobile included this location data on a dire 3.2 percent of emergency calls. Worse still, AT&T only did so on 2.6 percent of calls made. Fortunately, the FCC approved new technology last year that will apparently more accurately locate callers indoors. It reckons that updated rules regarding location accuracy from wireless callers would save around 10, 000 lives a year. Filed under: Misc , Internet Comments Via: Ars Technica

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90 percent of 911 calls made in Washington, DC lacked accurate location info

Come a guy’s 18th birthday in the US, he’s afforded new privileges. Aside from being able to legally buy cigarettes, lottery tickets and porn , he also has a couple of shiny civic duties to follow: signing up for the Selective Service System and voting on a regular basis. In terms of the former, draft dodging is a pretty serious offense, as the families of very old (and most likely very deceased) men in Pennsylvania were recently reminded. According to Boston , a database operator’s error caused some 14, 250 notices to go out to men born between 1893 and 1897, stating that their failure to fill out draft cards could result in fines and imprisonment. How’d that happen? Well, if you’re familiar with the Y2K Bug , the story makes a lot more sense. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s cataloging software apparently uses a two-digit birth-year field, and, as a result, the operator unknowingly selected gents hailing from a hundred years prior the actual target range of 1993 to 1997. Keystone State employees didn’t realize the issue until they were inundated by calls from understandably confused family members asking what the deal was. To its credit, the SSS issued an apology and noted that those files would be deactivated from the database and will send a personal letter of apology to President Lincoln posthaste. [Image credit: Getty] Filed under: Software Comments Source: Boston

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Computer glitch resurrects draft cards for 14,000 long-dead Pennsylvania men

Google’s top lawyer has spoken out to try to explain the mess that happened last week, when the search giant censored, and then partially reinstated, links to a number of important news articles. Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond now admits that some of the initial censorship decisions were “incorrect, ” specifically in the case of some Guardian newspaper articles that were delisted for a short time. But, as you’d probably expect, he also gives Google’s side of the story. “We’ve had over 70, 000 take-down requests covering 250, 000 webpages since May .” Drummond says that Europe’s recent ” Right To Be Forgotten ” (RTBF) ruling, which allows a member of the public to request the removal of search results containing their name, is so “vague and subjective” that it’s hard to enforce consistently. He adds that Google has received so many requests — 70, 000 so far, concerning 250, 000 different web pages, all of which must be assessed individually — that the company has been struggling to cope. He says the process is still very much a “work in progress” that will lead to “difficult and debatable judgments, ” as well as to errors. Unfortunately, Drummond fails to address one of the most controversial de-listings of last week. This concerned a BBC blog post about the former Merrill Lynch CEO, Stan O’Neal, and his involvement in the sub-prime mortgage crisis. At the time, the BBC was left in the dark about who had ordered the takedown and why — and O’Neal subsequently denied it was him. This led others to argue that Google had deliberately approved a weak takedown request, in order to make the RTBF ruling appear worse for the public interest than it really is. Separately, Google’s regional head of communications, Peter Barron, has rejected this accusation , saying that the O’Neal takedown request was legitimate and had come from a member of the public who had left an “embarrassing” comment on the original blog post. Judging from David Drummond’s broader argument today, Google’s general defence seems to be that it’s extremely difficult to decide whether a specific request is spurious or legitimate when you’re being swamped by so many — and that’s why it’s setting up an independent council of experts to tackle the trickier cases. Filed under: Internet , Google Comments Via: GigaOm Source: The Guardian

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Google says it’s struggling to cope after being asked to censor 250,000 EU webpages

It seems like just yesterday we reviewed MSI’s beastly GT70 Dominator gaming laptop. Indeed, that was only a month ago, but it seems MSI has already moved on: The company is now showing off the GT72 , a redesigned version with a slightly thinner profile, an improved cooling system and a less dorky aesthetic. We’ll get to that last bit in a minute, but first: the fans. MSI apparently took a lot of flak for the GT70’s single-fan setup. Not effective enough, according to some hardcore users. Well, in case that wasn’t heavy-duty enough for you, MSI has stepped up to two fans, with the vents taking up pretty much the entire bottom side of the notebook (have a look at the photo after the break if you don’t believe us). Only time (and review-testing) will tell if the new setup is quieter , but MSI says if nothing else the heat management should be better this time around. Those gigantic fans aside, the GT72 otherwise has a more streamlined look, with fewer plastic elements, a glass-composite palm rest, discreetly placed multimedia buttons and a seamless trackpad that doesn’t flex or bend as you press down on it. The bottom meanwhile is covered by a single piece, sealed by a handful of screws in the corners. Hopefully that’ll make in-home upgrades a little easier the next time you wanna replace the RAM or storage. Finally, the whole thing is slightly thinner and lighter than the last generation, measuring in at 48mm, or 1.9 inches (down from 2.1). Make no mistake, this thing’s still pretty cumbersome. But then again, this is a 17-inch gaming laptop we’re talking about and also, NVIDIA’s current-gen 880M GPU requires a bit of space for the heat sink, anyway. (The more you know!) Lest you think the all-black design is too safe, MSI is keeping the same backlit SteelSeries keyboard used on the GT70. And that’s a good thing: Not only are we suckers for programmable LEDs (aren’t you?), but this is also one of the most comfortable keyboards we’ve tested on a gaming laptop. This time around, too, the perimeter of the touchpad lights up, sort of like Dell’s older Alienwares. Also intact: the DynaAudio speakers. Which is great, because we loved the audio quality on the last-gen model. Not something that needed to be changed, in our humble opinion. On the inside, the GT72 makes do with last season’s specs — at least for now. At launch, it will ship with a 1080p display and either the NVIDIA 870M or 880M, though an MSI rep told us it will update the specs as NVIDIA and Intel announce fresh chips. As before, MSI will offer the GT with what it calls “Super RAID 3” — basically, three solid-state drives arranged in a RAID 0 configuration. As for connectivity, MSI says this will be the first to ship with Killer’s DoubleShot Pro setup combining an 802.11ac WiFi radio with 1Gbps Ethernet, which you can use at the same time. Look for these to ship soon, with prices ranging from around $2, 499 to $2, 899 to start. Over time, though MSI plans to add more configurations at both ends of the price spectrum. And, of course, there are new chips a’coming. So best to wait, even if you do choose to check out the hands-on pics now. Filed under: Gaming , Laptops Comments

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MSI’s latest gaming laptop brings a more grown-up design, a couple big-ass fans